


Share the Same Space For a Minute or Two

by SBG



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-26
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SBG/pseuds/SBG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny held himself together to take care of Grace, and Rachel. But at some point, it all had to come back and drop him on his ass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Share the Same Space For a Minute or Two

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it took me this long to finally get in the proper mindset to write a post 2.15 tag, and here it is, for what it is worth. All mistakes mine, not my lovely LdyAnne's, because I always, always futz after I send something to her.

H50H50

Bright headlights flashed in his face, seeming to come from nowhere. The approaching vehicle’s driver laid on the horn, blared it as Danny Williams narrowly avoided smashing head-on into the other car. He swerved the Camaro off the road, hissed as the tires skittered on gravel. He slammed the brakes on pure, stupid instinct. The rush of adrenaline had his skin itching, his mouth dry. He blinked a few times, squinted. Realized he had no idea where he was or how he’d gotten there. It was too dark to see and he had a sudden heart-in-throat fear that he was on some damned cliff road, term used loosely, and he’d almost ended up in the water. The car had screeched to a halt, but Danny … Danny’s whole body shook. It was a shiver at first, grew exponentially until he could barely hold onto the steering wheel. 

He thought he’d held himself together. He had. For Grace. For his own damned sanity. But he could not remember a single thing after shooting Stan, and the forgiving look Stan had given him just before Danny pulled the trigger. That, the bright blotch of blood on Stan’s white shirt, was crystal. Everything after was a fog. No, worse than fog. His mind was a giant blank. He didn’t know … had he killed Stan? Was Grace gone? Oh shit, oh God. It felt like she was gone. The gaping hole in his memory made him panic all the more, because he would not forget saving Grace and that meant, it meant…

Every second he could remember of the worst day he’d ever had in his life punched Danny in the stomach with such force it felt like an actual, physical blow and doubled him over, had him fumble to shut the car off, and for the door handle. Out, out. He had to get out before he puked all over himself. The air outside of the car was humid, hot even in the middle of the night, and did nothing to help settle his stomach at all. He choked, but didn’t vomit, somehow ended up on his knees, one hand clutching at the car door to keep him from going further down. He couldn’t see through the sudden, hot tears he needed to expel before they burned him from the inside out. Pain in his chest came next, heart racing way too fast. His ears buzzed like a swarm of angry hornets had descended around him.

Danny was dying and what a pisser that was, to be killed by a damned heart attack on the side of some cliff after facing the business end of a gun hours ago. If Grace was gone, then he wasn’t even sure he cared. His body acted on its own, tried to suck air in a chest too constricted to handle it. He let go of the car door, hunched over even further as he gasped. Vaguely, he heard himself making whining noises that sounded far too frightened animal to truly be coming from him. Breathe. He needed to get air into his body. He repeated the word as if it would make him accomplish a full lungful at last. If he could get his body to cooperate, maybe his brain would follow suit. 

Except, what if the hole in his memory got filled with something he couldn’t live with? He couldn’t live without. Grace, Grace. 

“Breathe through it, come on. Just breathe. You can do this.”

Danny didn’t know how long it was before he realized that wasn’t his own mental voice saying that over and over. It felt like forever. He had no idea how long the warm pressure of a hand rubbing a circle right between his shoulder blades had been there. He wanted it to be forever. He didn’t know whose body was pressed close enough to his own that he could feel the heat coming off of it, and he didn’t care. He leaned, allowed himself be held steady. 

“Good, that’s it,” someone (male, familiar) whispered. “It’s all right now.”

It wasn’t anything like all right. Deep in his core Danny knew that, but as he started breathing easier his muscles started losing tension, the ability to do anything but flop like a rag doll. Endorphins. Adrenaline. Whatever had fueled his panic depleted rapidly, left him a mass of useless muscle and bone. Ten minutes or four hours after it all began, he finally no longer felt like his heart was going to spasm and collapse every chamber into itself and when he could breathe without wheezing. He no longer felt much of anything, actually, numbness creeping into his body and mind. Danny allowed himself to float closer to that empty space. It was better that way, but he knew he couldn’t stay there forever. He just wanted a minute of peace, maybe five, from that dark thing lurking in the shadows more than happy to devour him. He couldn’t have that.

“Grace,” Danny said, wretched and broken and hollow. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

“Oh, fuck,” the voice said, closer than before. “You don’t … Grace is fine. She’s with Rachel, remember? She’s okay.”

The truth hit him almost as hard as the doubt and the tears finally released, hot and horrible as they ran down his face unchecked. He didn’t care. He didn’t even care what he looked like, what this looked like, huddled next to his car with a roadside savior he knew so well. The tears poured out of him, and crying was better than not breathing. The tears were as happy as they were sad, cathartic as they were destroying. He shook with them as he’d shaken with panic, exhausted himself until all he could do was gasp. 

“C’mere.”

Strong hands shifted him, settled him on his ass with his legs out like he was five. Distantly, he felt himself shiver. An arm draped over his shoulder, pulled him close again. He closed his eyes, drifted but didn’t go all the way out. He heard the ocean. He could never get away from that sound. It didn’t soothe, the way it never did. He twisted his torso, a little, turned his face up, kept his eyes closed.

“Steve,” Danny said. 

“Hey,” Steve said. “You with me now?”

Danny nodded, then shook his head. Everything was muzzy, until it wasn’t and the complete mortification of what had just happened started occurring to him. He didn’t understand how he’d ended up on his ass, shaken and recovering from near death. No, not near death, but it had felt like it. He didn’t think he wanted to know, really, how this was his life.

“Doesn’t matter.” Steve gripped him even tighter. “We’ll stay as long as you need, Danny. We’ll stay until you’re all right.”

Danny wanted to protest that he was fine, but he pushed that impulse aside. He wasn’t an idiot, and the fact that he’d just freaked out in spectacular fashion preemptively negated any claims that he was okay. Steve’s words wrapped around him like a blanket and he if he could, he’d physically draw them to him. Maybe that made him weak. Maybe it made him human.

“What?” Danny cleared his throat, opened his eyes but looked no further than Steve’s jaw. “How did you find me here?”

“Figured it would all hit you like a shit ton of bricks eventually,” Steve said matter-of-factly. “The day you had, it’s not one most people can just power through, even you. I shouldn’t have let you drive off alone.”

Danny had been fine. He’d held it together, except he hadn’t and Steve knew that. Of course, Steve knew. It was alarming, sometimes, how much Steve knew about him. Then again, sometimes it was the most reassuring thing in the world. 

“I knew something was wrong when you started driving out here. And watching you almost get in a wreck scared the shit out of me.”

Something in Danny’s gut flipped, not unlike the feeling he’d had before (Grace was not dead not gone notnot) yet not remotely like it either. Of all the emotions Danny thought would be understandable after the traumas of the day warm affectionate gratitude was not among them. He flicked his gaze up at last, saw Steve watching him carefully with a soft rendition of his Aneurysm Face, but something was different about it. There was fear in Steve’s eyes, a hint of sadness Danny couldn’t place. He felt like he should be mad or at least annoyed to be tracked like a perp or an incompetent, but Steve had single-handedly kept him from flying into a thousand pieces. He could only be grateful.

“You’ve been following me,” Danny said. 

“Yeah, since the hospital. I wanted to make sure Gracie got home okay. And I wanted to make sure you weren’t alone when it all came down. So I waited.” Steve ducked his head, not before that sad look in his eyes sharpened and he looked thinner, older, in that split second. “In case you left Rachel’s.”

Danny blinked at how Steve’s voice cracked when he said Rachel’s name. He had no idea why his damned heart started beating faster again. It might be somehow related to why he hadn’t wiggled out from under Steve’s arm.

Steve moved, brought his legs up into a wide, low upside down V as he leaned into Danny. 

“I know you’re probably getting ready to tell me how much of a control freak I am. How I invade your personal business, but Danny, when you went off the grid with Peterson, I … I can’t not know wher …”

“Thank you,” Danny interrupted before Steve said something neither of them was ready for but both knew. “I … thank you, that’s all, except this incident doesn’t get mentioned to anyone else. I don’t, uh, need people looking at me like I might break any second.”

Steve stared at him like he might break any second, then gave him an awkward half smile before he glanced away, squinted into the darkness surrounding them. 

Danny still didn’t know where he was, they were, other than outside city limits; he’d gone the wrong way from Rachel and Stan’s house. He’d worry about why, except he knew by that point he hadn’t been tracking anything. He closed his eyes again and tried to piece everything together. The gaps could be filled. Grace was alive, she had been tucked into bed and no longer terrified. Her little tearstained face was suddenly _right there_ in front of him. Her arms and legs twined around him in a hug too fierce for someone so small. His heart ached at the memory, the relief felt brand new and so did the sorrow from knowing it was his fault his baby had been terrorized like that.

“You want to talk about it?” Steve asked.

Jumbled images replayed in his mind’s eye, all the things he’d never actually forgotten, just lost in the panic. Peterson stuck a gun in his face, demanded insane things. Steve ran for him, shouted his name desperate and breathless. Rachel sobbed, forgave and blamed him at the same time. The looks he could only describe as pitying that Chin and Kono threw his way. Stan bled on the ground. Grace clung to him, alive and scared, and Steve stood off to the side, also alive and scared. Peterson’s angry, agonized face thrust too close to his own. Danny willed his body to not go back into panic mode, not to break down again.

Steve’s arm was warm and heavy on Danny’s shoulders, and he could smell the day’s sweat on both of them. It smelled of living, surviving. This thing they had wasn’t something Danny knew what to call, other than complicated. At the moment, this thing was what he needed. A pebble dug into his ass, reminded him of where they were, wherever they were. He had no urge to leave.

“No, I don’t want to talk. Not yet,” Danny said, remembered Steve close-mouthed and in torment after North Korea, still, sometimes. Remembered waking on Steve’s sofa with their legs tangled, and then their tongues. Remembered the feeling of rightness in kissing Steve and how it was both scary and spectacular. “I don’t want to think, about anything.”

Danny slid an arm around Steve’s waist, squeezed in a quasi-hug and then dipped out from under Steve’s arm. The loss of contact felt acute and sharp, but it was momentary. He straddled Steve’s lap, pressed himself to Steve’s chest, smiled when Steve automatically brought his arms around Danny’s back. Large hands pulled him closer. He wanted … Danny just needed to feel. He tilted his hips slightly, brushed their dicks against each other. Even clothed and barely aroused, it made him moan and he ignored the twinges in his knees reminding him he wasn’t twenty anymore. 

Steve gasped, turned his head away and tensed. He began pushing Danny away, not the hoped-for reaction. 

“What?” Danny asked. He kissed Steve’s neck, kept his lips there, waited.

“You. You and Rachel,” Steve said, and that sad look in his eyes now transmitted even more obviously in his voice. “Peterson tracked your phone messages, yours and Rachel’s, for months. We had to …”

Oh. Steve didn’t complete the thought; he didn’t have to finish it. Danny didn’t lift his head from the warmth of Steve’s neck, just moved his face so he was resting his forehead on a strong shoulder. He closed his eyes again. He knew too well how he’d been months ago. Desperate, pleading. Foolish. His cheeks flushed at the very thought that everyone had heard, they all knew now, what a sad chump he was. Steve knew.

“It’s not,” Danny said. He exhaled, reveled in the shiver Steve couldn’t contain as his warm breath gusted across the crook of his neck. “It wasn’t. Steve, I wasn’t thinking straight then.”

“Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve loved Rachel.”

At that, Danny raised his head and shook it. Then nodded. He was a goddamn mess, but he knew now what he hadn’t then. It hadn’t been Rachel he wanted, not truly. Grace, always. Family, yes, but what he’d wanted and needed so much wasn’t what Rachel could give him. She hadn’t been that to him for years, and he had been delusional for letting himself forget it. He thought Rachel had been a little delusional herself. Misery made people do stupid things.

“I haven’t.” He chewed his lip, brought a hand up to cup the side of Steve’s face. He hated that he was the reason for the heartache there. How much pain could he cause, unintentionally? He hated that they were talking about this, that there was cause to, but he couldn’t rewind his life to make better choices. “I think I just wanted to be happy, you know? I fell for the idea of that, ignored the reality of me and Rachel being a colossal fucking disaster together.”

He continued to search for happiness, was conflicted about what he was doing and with whom he might have found it. After they got Steve back from Wo Fat, that intense relief he felt occasionally even now when he looked at Steve to make sure the guy was right there, right next to him, opened his eyes wider. This thing of theirs was potent, real, and nothing like what he’d expected to feel, not with Steve. This thing of theirs, though, was the only thing outside of Grace that made him happy deep down inside where it mattered the most. He smiled at Steve, kissed his forehead.

“I want you to be happy, Danny,” Steve said.

God, Danny hated how small Steve sounded.

“I am. My baby girl’s safe. I have her,” Danny said. He started moving slowly, rocking into Steve. “And I have you.”

“I make you happy?”

“More than you probably should, because you’re insane most of the time. But you’re here, and you’re the only one who could be, who knew to be.” Danny shrugged, kissed Steve softly on the lips. “Steve, I don’t want Rachel. Please believe that, please believe this.”

“Danny,” Steve whispered, wrapped his arms around Danny’s back, edged a hand down to his ass. 

The sound of the waves lapping gave them a natural rhythm to follow, though they didn’t need it. Danny kissed Steve, tender and simple, comfortable in the same way they’d managed from their very first time. Their bodies moved easily as they shared the same space, and Danny let himself feel it all. He let the day wash away into the closeness of Steve, the way Steve reacted to his touch and he to Steve’s, the way they rose and fell together as if it had always been and always would be just them. 

Danny let himself be happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Talking Heads' _This Must Be The Place_ , which I think is one of the world's most perfect songs. _I'm just an animal looking for a home, and share the same space for a minute or two; and you love me till my heart stops, love me till I'm dead._


End file.
